


Voices

by TheMuchTooMerryMaiden



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Hospitalization, Lewis Frightfest 2015, Mental Health Issues, Psychic Abilities, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 05:19:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5116940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMuchTooMerryMaiden/pseuds/TheMuchTooMerryMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone believes that James has had a psychotic break but is it true?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voices

**Author's Note:**

> This may be triggery for people as it covers mental health issues including hospitalisation and suicidal thoughts. It is in the same universe as [For the Increase of Charity](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1025854) but you don't need to read that to understand it

It was all that Robbie Lewis could do to force himself to visit James in _That Place_ and yet he turned up regular as clockwork, every two days, seven times a fortnight. He couldn’t for the life in him work out how things could have gone so wrong. It was no use Laura telling him it was just one of those things, tragic but unavoidable, but this was James and Robbie knew that he ought to be able to help. In the end it had pushed such a wedge between him and Laura that they were living apart now.

It was hard for Robbie to work out when it began. There was definitely a before and an after but he couldn’t put his finger on where the gap was. Certainly it had been in the autumn a couple of years ago. He’d spent a lot of time looking at what they’d been doing in work at that time, but actually it’d been quite a quiet time, the most exciting thing being the two murdered kiddies who’d turned out to have been dead for better than a century. Thinking back, James had been disturbed by that case, but then that was nothing unusual, there wasn’t a copper worth calling a copper who wasn’t disturbed by cases involving children. Anyway, it was impossible to decide what was cause and what effect; was James disturbed because he was getting ill, or did he get ill because he’d seen one small corpse too many? Or was that case nothing to do with it? Laura had said the lad had probably been hearing voices since he was in his teens and Robbie had seethed. He knew that she was trying to make him feel better, but surely she had to see that James had been as sane as anyone. How it had gone from that to a full blown argument, one of many he wasn’t sure.

Still, sitting in his car in the car park wasn’t going to help anyone, him or James and the coffee he’d brought the lad (decaffeinated the hospital had requested) wasn’t going to be getting any warmer, so he resolutely took the keys out of the ignition and got out, squared his shoulders and walked towards the main entrance.

It was a classy place, it didn’t look like a hospital, it looked like a minor stately home and walking towards it Robbie thought about Crevecoeur wondering if it had all started there, just like he found himself wondering about everything that had ever happened to James, what it was that had pushed him over the edge. Leaving the priesthood? Joining the police? Those little kiddies? That lad’s suicide? He stopped walking, pausing for a moment to clear his head, Robbie being distracted and stressed was not what James needed, he needed calm and he needed cheerful and he needed a friendly face. Robbie just hoped that this time James would recognise him. He continued, walking to the door and pressing the buzzer to be let in.

The receptionist recognised him by now, as well she ought, he’d visited three or four times a week for nearly two years now, she didn’t ask for any identification and truth to tell Robbie had stopped bringing it with him, it wasn’t like he carried a warrant card around with him anymore, so he walked past her with nothing but a quick, ‘Morning’ walking towards the now familiar room, wondering what he would find.

The door to James’ room was slightly open, but Robbie knocked and waited, determined to treat James like he’d always treated him, allowing him some dignity, some degree of self-determination. 

“Come in,”

Robbie’s shoulders dropped with the relief that today wasn’t apparently going to be one of the days when James couldn’t or wouldn’t speak,

“Hello,” he said, pushing open the door, “how are you this morning?” He held out the cup of coffee he’d brought with him and James smiled and reached for it,

“Have a seat,” James said, carefully taking the lid from the cup seemingly determined not to spill a drop.

Robbie sat down in the other chair in the room, a thing somewhere between a stand chair, an arm chair and an invention of Torquemada. 

He looked squarely at James and repeated his question,

“How are you?”

One of the things he and Laura had rowed about had been him asking questions like that. She’d taken him to task about how it wasn’t helping, how it was just putting pressure on James that he couldn’t respond to. He’d declared his intention of not treating James any differently than he always had, the lad was ill and Robbie would treat him the same as he always had and particularly he would treat him like he was going to get well. That had been the point when Laura had angrily told him to stop kidding himself and he’d stomped out of the house and stayed at a Travelodge at one of the services on the M40.

James shrugged, 

“Not too bad,” he began, but then just as quickly his head jerked to the left and Robbie knew that James was still hearing the voices. He held his breath, the better days were when James could at least manage not to answer them, the worse days were the ones where he’d get into an argument with people only he could hear and very worst were the days where whatever only he could hear reduced him to tears and pleas of ‘take me away from them, please!’

“Sorry,” James continued before Robbie could say anything, “I’m fine, really, I even got a little bit of sleep last night.”

“Well, that’s good,” Robbie replied and he supposed that James did look a little bit less hollow eyed than usual, “I was wondering if you wanted to get out for a bit of fresh air?”

It was a question he’d asked before, there was no reason for James not to go out, properly supervised, it was just that mostly he didn’t want to. Today, however, James smiled and nodded,

“I’d like that,”

It seemed like he was going to say more but Robbie waited for a moment or two and James said nothing else,

“Right then get your shoes on and find your coat and we’ll go for a bit of a drive and a bit of a walk.”

 

Robbie knew that the patients (not inmates Robbie had to be careful not to even think that, it was a long time since he’d worked in the hospital up in Sunderland) were encouraged to go out and get exercise in the grounds of the clinic but if James’ blinking reaction to the watery late Autumn sunlight was anything to go by he hadn’t been making much use of the privilege. They walked towards Robbie’s car and when James got in he had to be reminded to put his seatbelt on.

Robbie drove very sedately, worrying that James would find anything like speed overwhelming at the moment and sure enough when he glanced over at him he had his eyes closed,

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

“No,” James replied still with his eyes closed, “I’m just enjoying the sun on my face, I’m glad it’s a nice day.”

Robbie felt himself shiver, like someone had walked over his grave his mum would have said,

“Me too,” he replied, “Fancy a walk by the canal?”

“Yes,” James replied, “but up by the city where I can hear the bells? I miss the bells, I’d like to hear them again.”

 

It was shocking to Robbie how unfit James was. The walk up from the road to the tow path left him breathless. Robbie tried not to show that he’d noticed this but James rumbled him,

“Sorry, I don’t get nearly enough exercise,”

“Not to worry,” Robbie said, “I don’t get as much exercise as I used to.”

There was a hitch in James’ step but they continued on for a few yards,

“Why did you give it up? They must have needed you when … I gave up?”

It wasn’t anything they’d ever talked about and Robbie found it difficult to shape a reply. James filled the gap,

“You coming to visit me, well it’s made the world of difference, but I didn’t ever want to cost you as much as I have done.”

“You haven’t cost me anything,” Robbie said quickly, “not anything that was worth having, anyway.”

James stopped and turned to look at him,

“That’s not true, what about you and Laura?”

Robbie wondered how he knew about that, he certainly hadn’t told him. The look that James gave him was so like the looks he’d given him all those years, the look that said I’m working things out, the times when he was most ‘James’ that Robbie had to blink and swallow before he could reply,

“I’m sure that wasn’t going anywhere anyhow, we were both far too set in our ways when we finally got together. I was as bad as she was, you didn’t want to be there when we’d both dug our heels in.”

Robbie was trying for humour but unsure that he’d managed to pull it off. 

“But you’d still be together if it wasn’t for me and all this … stuff?”

“I doubt it,” Robbie replied, “I think it was a matter of time, this just brought all the other stuff to a head. We’re both OK, we still see each other from time to time.”

“And work?” James asked,

“Well we both know I was getting a bit long in the tooth for that. New boss, wanted new people you must have seen that before you left.”

James paused,

“It’s actually hard to remember what it was like, but yeah I remember. Did he carry on being so changeable? It seemed like half of the time he wanted me to sort you out and the other half he wanted you to sort me out. But still, it must have left them short-handed when I went off ill without you jacking it in as well. You didn’t need to you know.”

There was a world there but Robbie decided to go for the simple answer,

“Yeah, he was a bit quixotic. In the end I decided it was better to go on my own terms than to wait for him to get shot of me. It wasn’t about you, or at least it wasn’t all about you. I daresay some people got promotions sooner than they might have done but I doubt if they were upset by that, eh?”

“I guess not.”

They continued to walk along the path, the familiar profile of the cities towers and spires growing as they approached.

“Have I ever said thank you?” James asked,

“For what?”

“For all the time you’ve spent coming to see me, for keeping me going, for not giving up.”

“No,” Robbie replied against the tightening of his throat, “but then I’d have told you not to talk so wet if you’d tried it.”

“Thank you.”

Robbie was aware of a slowly increasing unease, an awareness of the fact that they were a long way away from any help if it was needed, if something bad happened. Without really noticing he patted the pocket his mobile phone was in, reassured by its presence,

“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” he said, “you’d have done the same for me. Shall we go down into town?”

“I’ve got so much to thank you for,” James replied, “but most of it boils down to thanking you for being a friend even when I didn’t deserve one, for sticking with me when I’ve had my head up my arse, and through all this.” He gestured around him but Robbie knew that he didn’t mean his current location, he meant the time he’d been ill. Robbie’s feeling of unease increased as he tried to think of a way of turning the conversation away from what suddenly seemed like a very dangerous place.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Robbie replied eventually deciding that he should be straight forward, “You’re worrying me, James. What’s going on?”

James smiled at him but it seemed like a sad, wistful thing,

“OK, I won’t thank you anymore,” he replied, “let’s just enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.”

Robbie wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be reassuring, but it wasn’t. As they walked along, too close together as they always had been, Robbie tried to come up with something to talk about, something normal, something that would allow him to get rid of a feeling of unease that was properly ramping up to apprehension and the beginnings of panic. He couldn’t come up with a thing and in the end it was James who broke the silence,

“There’s a bench along here, let’s sit down for a moment, I can’t believe how much a short walk on the flat has taken out of me.”

They sat down and James sighed and leaned back, eyes closed face up to the sun. The fact that he had his eyes shut gave Robbie the chance to properly look at him. He was pale, even by Hathaway standards, but then Robbie knew that he’d not been going out much despite the encouragement of the staff, what he hadn’t properly noticed was how thin he was. It wasn’t like he’d ever been exactly stocky, but there had always been layers of muscle underlying his slender form, now looking at him it seemed like it was the layers of muscle that had gone, leaving his bones far too obvious to anyone who cared to look. Robbie continued to look, wondering if the people at that place had noticed, what they were going to do about it. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that when James spoke it made him jump,

“I want to tell you what’s going on, but I’m scared that you won’t believe me, scared that you’ll just put it down to ‘my condition’.”

Robbie didn’t know how to answer the question implicit in that statement. They’d never talked about what was wrong with James; he’d tried often enough but James just wouldn’t talk about it. Even when it had become obvious that James was responding to things that no one else could hear, even then, when challenged he denied that there was anything going on. Even on that fuck-awful night when Robbie had finally called an ambulance and uniform, when James had been sectioned, James had just looked at him sadly and not tried to explain what was happening. And now he wanted to talk about it Robbie was scared. Still,

“I want to listen to anything you want to tell me,” he said turning slightly to face him. Without opening his eyes James began to speak,

“You remember the not-case with the two young children?”

“The one where it turned out they’d been dead for years?” he asked,

“Yeah, that one. There was a lot more to it than I told you. When I was stuck in that house,” there was a long pause and Robbie could see the tendons in James’ neck work as he swallowed a couple of times, “when I was stuck in that house, well, I talked to them.”

Robbie was about to speak, to say he’d often spoken to the dead, he remembered talking to a supposed suicide they'd found during one of their early cases, but James seemed to know what he was going to say,

“No, when I say I spoke to them, what I mean is that we had a conversation. I knew what had happened to them because they told me, they told me about their dad and their mum and how she’d tried to keep them safe but had killed them instead. I knew they’d been there for a long time because they told me, I didn’t need Laura’s forensics. I helped them, at least I hope I did, I helped them move on, got them out of that house where they’d been for so long. They were the first.”

Robbie swallowed, he wanted to ask questions but most of all he wanted to find a way to say that what James had experienced had been an understandable reaction, that it didn’t mean anything, but clearly it did, clearly it was the start of James’ problems. He reached back a couple of years to unused interview techniques, for a neutral question,

“They were the first?”

“Yeah, they were the first, but they weren’t the last. I didn’t notice at first, at first it was just the odd whisper, too low to hear, easy to ignore, at crime scenes, sometimes it just seemed like a perfectly normal hunch about a case, like my subconscious giving me a nudge. But gradually the voices were clearer, harder to ignore and there were more and more of them, not just the poor bastard we were dealing with at the time, but ‘strangers’ if that’s the right word. In the end, that night when you called the ambulance, there were just so many of them, far too many to ignore, and no way I could help them all, no way at all, I thought that if they sedated me then their voices would stop and I could get some peace.”

“And did you?”

“No,” James replied with a brief smile, “no, it didn’t stop them, it was like it just gave them completely free access. The ‘noise’ was shattering and there was nothing I could do to get away from it, I was, a captive audience.”

He stopped speaking, continuing to bask in the sun, while Robbie floundered for something to say. He didn’t even know where to start. This was the first time James had admitted to him that he was hearing voices and surely that was some kind of breakthrough? But he was still sure, apparently that the voices had some sort of independent existence that they weren’t delusions, that they were ghosts? Robbie knew that he was incredibly out of his depth here, that this was a conversation that James should be having with some sort of therapist, but he wasn’t he wanted to talk to Robbie, so he had to do the job that was in front of him,

“So the kiddies from the house,” he began, “what did you think when they spoke to you?”

James opened his eyes and sat up,

“I thought I was hallucinating, obviously, I thought I was losing my mind.”

“But you don’t think that now?” he asked,

“No, I don’t think I was losing my mind then, what they said checked out, and there was no way I could have known some of the things. I spent weeks looking into old paper records from the police back then, I found their birth certificates and their entries on the 1891 census but nothing on the 1901, I traced their mother and their father and his police record and everything checked out. No, I don’t think I lost my mind then, I think that happened later when all the voices got too much for me to handle. I’m not kidding myself Robert, I know I’m as mad as a kipper now, but I wasn’t then.”

“Don’t say that,” Robbie replied, “You’re not mad,”

James was looking at him with a sceptical expression,

“Oh, I think I am, what else would you call someone who hears ghosts wherever they go, who can’t ignore them for long enough to have a conversation most of the time. Hell, Robert, most people would call someone at least ‘eccentric’ for even believing in ghosts!”

“You know,” Robbie replied, “that’s the most like you you’ve sounded for ages. What’s changed? Why are you telling me this now?”

Robbie hadn’t wanted to ask the question, afraid of what the answer would be,

“You’re not going to like it,” James began and Robbie tensed up even more, he knew he wasn’t going to like it, he knew what the answer was going to be, “I’ve had enough I’m not doing this anymore,” he cleared his throat and looked Robbie squarely in the eyes, “I’m sorry.”

Robbie didn’t even try to pretend he didn’t know what James was talking about,

“I’m not having that,” he said and James interrupted,

“I’m sorry, but it’s not your decision. I know this will hurt you and I know it will hurt other people as well but I can’t do this any longer, I just can’t. You don’t know what it’s like never even getting a night’s sleep, never getting any peace, it never gets any better.”

“What makes you think I don’t understand? You’re not the first person to feel like this and you won’t be the last. It only feels like it’s never ending, there’s medication, there’s therapy, there’s your friends,” Robbie’s words ran out as he looked at James. Calm unshakable resolution was all that he saw there, that and also regret,

“I’m not making light of how you will feel, how Laura will feel, I’m not even making light of how Nell will feel, but how about what I feel? Why should I have to carry on like this. I know the old argument about suicides being selfish but what about me, who can say better than me whether how I’m living is bearable or not?”

Robbie was angry and he took no care at all to stop it showing,

“So what you’re saying is that I’m being selfish for wanting to keep you here? That’s rubbish! I don’t want to keep you here; I want you to keep looking for something that’s going to make you better! I don’t want you to carry on living in pain, but I want you here trying to get better!”

Robbie wasn’t the only person who was angry,

“I’m not bloody ill! So I’m not going to get better, am I? This isn’t something where a course of some anti-psychotic will stop the voices and I’ll be able to get better! You don’t think they tried that? All it did was make me even more open to every lost soul, even less able to ignore them. It was obvious even to the doctors that it wasn’t helping and they tried another medication and another and another and nothing helps. There are so many of them, Robbie, so many of them and I can’t help them. Some of them just want to be heard and they go away, but there’s another ten or twenty behind them, and some of them want me to, need me to do something for them and they’re worse because I can’t do anything for them and they can’t understand why. No amount of any drug is going to do anything about that.”

“You still can’t expect me to ignore the fact that you’re going to do yourself a mischief,” Robbie replied, “you can’t ask that of me. There must be something else that can be done.” Robbie mentally flailed around trying to think of something, “What about the church? Surely they have something to say about spirits?”

James managed to dredge a smile up from somewhere,

“I’ve talked to a number of priests, most of them can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that this is even possible, one of them used this as the final proof that the Catholic view of the need for the Last Rites was justified and more or less said it was the fault of Luther and his 95 theses or Henry VIII. I think he’s one that needs watching. None of them could offer anything concrete, or even metaphysical that might help, it wasn’t like I hadn’t tried prayer already.” There was a long, long pause before James spoke again, “I really have tried, Robert, but I’m so tired and this is the only think I can do.”

“It’s not the only thing you can do! You can try and find a solution. You can let me try and find a solution. I’ve only known about this for half an hour and you think I should just accept it as a reason for you to do away with yourself? Give me some time, at least give me that!”

James leaned forward supporting his head with his hands and breathing deeply as if he’d been running. It seemed like a long time before he spoke,

“I’m not sure how long I can give you, I’m sorry, but this is more than I can bear, or I wouldn’t be doing this at all, because I’m not sure it will help, I live daily with the proof that this isn’t the end, for all I know I’ll just become one of them and torment some other poor soul. That’s my greatest fear.”

“Well then, don’t do it. Or at least don’t do it yet, give things time, give me time to think to, I don’t know, research to find out about things. Don’t go yet.”

James squared his shoulders,

“I don’t want you to think that I only told you all this so that you’d talk me out of it, that’s not what it was, you know that, right? I didn’t want to go and leave you not knowing what was going on, not knowing why, thinking you could have done more.”

This was something that Robbie could do that might make James feel a little bit better,

“No, I know this isn’t some kind of ‘cry for help’, I know you’re not doing this to make me feel worse, don’t worry. But will you give me some time?”

“I don’t suppose I’ve got a lot of choice,” James replied with a crooked smile, “there’s nothing to stop you going right back to that place and getting me put on suicide watch is there?”

“I won’t do that if you promise me you won’t do anything without we talk about it again. I’ll believe you if you tell me that. I know you wouldn’t saddle me with that kind of guilt.”

James’ smile was more convincing this time,

“No, I wouldn’t. I’ll hang on. I’ll hang on as long as I can, but we will need to talk about this again, because I don’t think I can hang on forever.”

Robbie knew that there was nothing else to be said at this point but that there were practical things he could do while he tried to consider this absurd situation, while he tried to decide what was madness and what wasn’t. He knew that Laura, steeped in the medicinal view of everything, would say that James should be on enough medication to make sure that he didn’t ‘do anything stupid’, that he shouldn’t trust assurances from someone who clearly wasn’t in his right mind at the moment.

“Right, then,” he said, “let’s get some food, you look like you haven’t eaten for months.” He paused and then asked a question that felt like falling down the rabbit hole with James, “Is it worse in … older places, places that have seen more … death? I mean are these spirits tied to the place where they died?”

The smile he got from James was like sunrise,

“You believe me?” James asked in a small voice but with such hope, and even though he wasn’t sure he did the answer was clearly so important to Robbie that he could only nod and hope that it would give James the strength to carry on for a little longer.

 

Except of course what could he do if he wasn’t actually just hoping that James would forget about his suicidal urges and just spontaneously get better and he knew that wouldn’t happen, for someone like James, with James’ upbringing to be actively considering suicide then it must be unbearable. And there was the problem. In his old police days then his duty would be clear, he should have said something to James’ doctors, let them medicate him, even if that was against his will, save his life. What stopped him was the mental picture of James left with people screaming at him for help and with no way to either help them or get away. One of the reasons that Robbie believed that at least James believed what was happening to him was the vivid picture he’d painted as to what that was like. It wasn’t a problem that he had a stock answer to, he couldn’t treat it like a case, who would he question, there were no alibis to check, there weren’t any experts to question.

That thought stirred a memory though, the memory of the psychic involved when that friend of Laura’s had been killed. Robbie racked his brain trying to remember her name. In the end he ended up googling psychics in Oxford and going back through the results until he found her, Ursula Van Tessell, and a little more searching got him to her web page. It hadn’t been updated in a while but it did give him an address for her representation and if Robbie was a little less than honest about the fact that he was no longer a serving policeman in order to get information about her address from her agent, well then, it was all in a good cause after all.

 

It was quite a drive out to north Devon and then more of a drive as it turned out that she lived in the back of beyond. It was late in the afternoon when Robbie found the little farmhouse down a dirt track. He’d decided against calling her first, weighing the chance that she would not be home against the chance that she would refuse to talk to him if he alerted her first. Summoning up skills he’d honed as a PC he hammered at the door with what anyone would recognise as a policeman’s knock. He was just about to repeat it when a light came on in the hall and the door was unlocked.

“Ms Van Tessell?” he asked as she edged the door open,

“Who wants to know?” she asked,

“My name’s Robbie Lewis, I used to work for Thames Valley Police and we met once during a case.”

Her eyes unfocused for a second and then she smiled slightly,

“About four or five years ago? Roughly this time of year? I was doing some readings at a theatre there. You had a particularly protective colleague?”

Robbie was impressed with her recall,

“Aye, that’s right, can I come in? I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“OK,” she said, and the door shut so that she could take the chain off before she opened the door properly to let him in. She spoke as she turned away and he followed her down the hallway, 

“I meant what I said then, about your wife, she didn’t suffer, I wasn’t making that up,”

Robbie didn’t reply to that, just following her into what seemed to be the main living room of the house,

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asked, “It’s a long drive and I’ve had a lot on just recently,”

“No, of course not,” she replied, “I could make you a cup of tea or coffee if you want one,”

“Tea would be a godsend.”

 

Robbie hadn’t been that desperate for a brew but he needed the thinking time that her brewing up created. He was surprised that she remembered anything about him, they’d met twice and it was a long time ago and yet she remembered what she’d said about Val (or what she’d made up about Val, wasn’t that the secret of lying, having a good memory?), and it seemed like she also remembered James. Robbie wasn’t sure how he felt about this. He was here looking into this for James but for the life in him he wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to be true or not. If it were true then James wasn’t mad but also Robbie’s whole world view had been wrong pretty much forever. Either way, he needed to know so he sat up straighter as she came in with two steaming mugs.

She passed him one of them and then sat down, looking directly at him,

“What can I help you with, Inspector?” she asked.

He couldn’t help it, he corrected her, 

“It’s not Inspector anymore, I retired about eighteen months ago,”

“Oh, I think you’ll always be a detective, Mr…”

So, he thought she either doesn’t remember everything or she’s playing a canny game,

“Lewis, Robbie Lewis,” he answered the unvoiced question, “I’m here about the particularly protective colleague you mentioned,”

“I thought you might be,” she replied and Robbie felt his anger rising, she wasn’t going to fool him with her ‘cold reading’ techniques,

“Oh, aye?” he said, “Is that your psychic powers showing?”

“Not really,” she replied with a ready smile, “It’s just that I could see even then that he was very important to you just as you were to him, it would have to be something really big to get you all the way out here and I could see that you two were a big part of each other’s lives.” She paused and cleared her throat, “Is he well?”

It was all Robbie could do not to ask her if she didn’t already know the answer to that question but he took a deep breath and reminded himself that he’d called on her, she hadn’t approached him.

“No, he isn’t,”

“He’s not dead,” she said and it wasn’t a question, “what’s happened to him?”

“Well,” Robbie replied, “that depends on who you speak to. According to his doctors he’s had an extended psychotic break, according to him he hears dead people. I’m not really sure why I’m here but,” he paused for a long time while she looked on with a small encouraging smile and he tried to work out whether there was any point asking the next question, whether he’d be able to believe whatever her answer was, “is what you do for real? Could he really be hearing dead people rather than just hearing voices?”

She maintained eye contact with him while she took a sip of her tea before she spoke,

“Yes, what I do is for real, at least some of the time, but as for your colleague, I can’t tell you without seeing him. It seemed to me that there was the possibility that he was a sensitive but that he’d buried it well and truly at an early age. Most people who do that, well they do a thorough job, and it stays buried. Tell me, is he a very religious man?”

The question shocked Robbie. It seemed to bang on to be random, but equally he knew about the techniques used by charlatans to gull people out of their money, and the asking of open questions where people could supply the answer they wanted was top of the list. He decided to answer the question,

“He certainly was in his youth, not sure about now.”

“It’s more often religious people who refuse to believe what they can do, as it cuts across their beliefs or if they’re younger the beliefs of their parents. He’s a Catholic?” she asked and when Robbie nodded she continued, “The most likely thing that’s happened is that he’s had a psychotic break and he’s interpreting the voices he hears as coming from an external source,” Robbie’s heart sank, “but having met him there’s a chance that it’s his natural talent coming out. Did he have some sort of traumatic encounter? Has he told you?”

Robbie nodded again,

“He got himself stuck in an old house and he says that he talked to the, what ghosts? Spirits? Of two little kiddies who’d been killed there about a hundred years ago. What seemed to bother him was the way they were stuck there, at least that’s what he said. Then after that there just got to be more and more of them and he can’t ignore them and he says they never let him alone. He’s,” Robbie’s throat tightened on him and he had to take a sip of his now cooling tea, “he’s talking about doing himself a mischief just to get some relief.”

She put down her cup on the coffee table and sat forward.

“I don’t know whether I’ll be able to help him, you have to know that, but I can talk to him, it might help even if all he knows is that he’s not the only person that this has ever happened to, I might be able to help him work on filtering out some of the voices, it may be that he needs to be somewhere psychically ‘quiet’,” she smiled “there’s a reason I live out in the middle of nowhere, you know!”

 

It hadn’t been quick, although as Ursula had said the relief James felt just to have it confirmed that he might not have just lost his mind had been obvious, but slowly she’d managed to talk him through methods of filtering of not being so open to every passing spirit. They’d told the doctors that Ursula was an old friend who had moved back into the area, that she’d be visiting James and that gave them cover for her to work with him. It cost him, Robbie knew that, part of the problem was his desire to help people and turning people away, filtering them out was hard for him, it took a long time for him to fully realise that in order to be able to help some of them that is what he had to do, help some of them and ignore others.

Now, however, Robbie and Ursula were driving to the hospital to pick James up to bring him home.

“You’ll need to look after him, you know, he’s always going to be vulnerable, when he gets tired, when he gets stressed.”

“Aye, I know that, and I worry, I won’t be around forever,” he didn’t finish the sentence,

“I’ll keep an eye on him when the time comes,” she replied to his unasked question.

“Thanks. Thanks for all of it for helping him, for not just laughing in my face, for helping James get his life back.” He stopped speaking again, unwilling to ask the final question he had, but she answered anyway,

“It is real, James is your proof of that, I promise that I haven’t just been pretending.”

The cynic in him thought ‘you would say that wouldn’t you,’ but then he realised that it didn’t matter, real or fake, she’d helped James and that was all that mattered.


End file.
